Some time ago Nikiforuk published an article at Foreign Policy declaring Canada a petrostate. It caused a big splash and became a talking point in the culture wars that make up Canadian politics. Stephen Saideman called it hyperbole. And Andrew Leech called it short on evidence…
I am fascinated by what constitutes the limits of “respectable” public discourse. This phenomenon is related, in part, to the Overton window, which is the set of concepts that are considered politically acceptable by the dominant culture. But I am equally fascinated by the social limits …
It’s no small chore trying to understand climate change. We live in a society that is lacking in scientific literacy. Even those of us that have some, have little time to read and understand so many complex issues of our day, including climate change…
Do a search for the name, “Jim Hansen” on the National Post website and you get two hits from 2012 and 2011. Both hits are about NASA, which is good, since Hansen is the leading climate scientist at NASA. Unfortunately, both articles promote the protestations of 49 former NASA employees…
On November 30th, Derek Abma wrote an article for the National Post, claiming that the journal Nature, and one of it’s authors, Elliot Diringer, was recommending that we let the Kyoto accord die. While the article gets many small facts and half truths right, Abma manages to misrepresent the essential argument by Diringer. But that’s…
Given my interest in science, public relations, web design and climate change, I have been thinking for a while about building a site with some social and moral relevance to the world I inhabit. I have been building a website about climate change soundbites.
I’ve been a big fan of Skeptic Magazine for many years. And I am a big fan of science. My thesis was about, in part, science and the philosophy of science. I have some science training and I have some understanding for the way various institutions of science operate.1 I say all of this because…
If you don’t know the name, Brigette DePape, you should. She risked, and lost, her job to say what most Canadians believe. Maude Barlow thinks she is “courageous and committed.” Elizabeth May thought that she undertook an act of personal courage. And, importantly, DePape’s press release and other publications are thoughtful and articulate. But my…
There was a time when Rex Murphy spoke difficult truths and challenged powerful institutions. There was a time when Rex Murphy was a journalist that I might listen to. But no more…
Media coverage of global warming, ahem, has been divisive. If you are a busy person trying to understand global warming, you might get a little confused by reading the National Post, the Calgary Herald, or Russ Campbell’s blog. It’s partly because of the lack of critical discourse about many self-proclaimed climate experts’ credentials…
CO2NOW.org is a neat resource specializing in helping humans simply know how much CO2 is currently in the Earth’s atmosphere. It kind of reminds me of a thermostat. We should all have a carbon-o-stat for our earth. And it should be set for 350 PPM or lower. :( Check out http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Widget/ to find an assortment…
If the rate of flow in the gulf of Mexico is 90,000 barrels a day, then we’ve had ourselves an Exxon Valdez every three days. Recent estimates, put the rate of flow between 50,000 and 150,000 barrels a day (BPD). In EVUs (Exxon Valdez Units), this is between .2 and .6 EVUs per day. That…
With a variety of global environmental crises upon us, this old newscast casts doubt on our ability to deal with messes effectively. Sometimes, our attempt to manage a scenario results in another, more dangerous, scenario. I appreciate the reporter’s final remarks that, roughly, “should this happen again, the authorities will remember what to do… and…
One problem I have with so many conservatives and libertarians is their attachment to their untested (and often inconsistent) theories and ideas. To be fair, we’re all probably a little challenged by science and research that refutes our own beliefs. But when I followed a link to this article by the Guardian,1 I suddenly had…
This conversation with Paul Saffo is interesting in part because these two middle age white executives are speaking so nonchalantly about the relative likelihood of nation states breaking up into city states. And don’t forget about the rise of robots. And don’t forget about surviving climate change. And what about the cost of housing on…
This is a story about one of my moments of glory. Some of you know that some years ago I was fundraising for Greenpeace. One particularly cold winter day, I engaged a passerby in a conversation about global warming. The man who stopped to talk was quite charming but he clearly had no sympathy for…
Jim Prentice and the Harper Government have earned Canada several Fossil Awards for the positions they have been putting forward in negotiations at Copenhagen. Actually, we’re currently leading the scoreboard for total points. Hell. We took first place and second on Friday, December 11. We took Second place for trying to argue that our target…
I’m an admirer of the minds behind GeoMemes, and I was visiting their site recently and noticed that they had embedded the advertisement below. It’s not something I would expect to find on the home page of their website. But as the tech nerds at GeoMemes point out, something important is happening this week.
Here’s a fun thing that you can try at home. It’s a simple form of media analysis. The result of this particular analysis leads me to think bad thoughts about Canwest. But that’s just me. Here’s what I did. First I went to the Calgary Herald website. But you can pick any online media outlet…
The thing about Rex Murphy that troubles me is the way he calls his show “Cross-Country Checkup” but whenever I find myself listening I hear a representative from The Conference Board of Canada or the Fraser Institute. These guys (they seem to be men mostly) are payed to pretend they’re experts on any topic of…
David Suzuki says call prime minister Stephen Harper and tell him that Canada needs to show a willingness to cooperate in Copenhagen. And he also says we should record our phone calls on video and then post them to the Suzuki site. So that’s what we did and we submitted our videos to the Suzuki…
http://www.takeactiononclimatechange.com/ This is a good ad. Found it because I’m a Tyee fan. If you have children under 17, you can upload photos of them to the Mom’s Against Climate Change site and they’ll project images of your kids onto walls in Copenhagen and Ottawa during the upcoming UN summit in December. They’re doing this…
Today is a good day to think about our life support system. Our life support is our earth. It’s a delicate mixture of gravity, various nuclear forces that hold our subatomic and atomic particles together, solar energy, some electrical forces that hold our molecules together, a chemical soup composed of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen1…
This thoughtful film appeals to me so much because I think the animation is really artful. It reviews the notion of a tipping point (important notion for people to understand) and it’s written and narrated in a way that doesn’t talk down to it’s audience. Also, he’s really clear that climate change is, at this…
